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“This is significant when we consider that the most essential product of the advertising industry is hunger. That is, commercials are intended to create a feeling of lack in the viewer, a deep ache that can only be assuaged by purchasing the product. As Dr. Neil Postman, chairman of the Department of Communications Arts at New York University, points out, “What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.” So we hand our children over to Madison Avenue to be told, hundreds of hours a year, how hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular they are and will continue to be until they spend (or persuade their parents to spend) a few more dollars. And then we wonder why our children feel so hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular, and why they are so needy.”

“Cable aside, the television industry is not in the business of selling programs to audiences. It is in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. Issues of “quality” and “social responsibility” are entirely peripheral to the issue of maximizing audience size within a competitive market.”

have banded together to urge advertisers to not
advertise on Channel One. Channel One is the company
that provides free TVs to schools who are willing to
provide their students as captive advertising subjects.

Now you could argue that with the huge amount of
TV that kids are watching at home, that an extra
12 minutes of TV at school doesn’t matter. And
that’s a very good point, parents using TV as a soother,
babysitter, and educator are a much bigger problem
than 12 minutes of TV.

On the other hand, parents would not be letting their
kids watch so much TV if it wasn’t for the fact that
so many “experts” and authority figures have come out
and argued that TV is harmless and/or educational.

Certainly having mandatory TV watching in school sends
a very strong message to both parents and children that
TV is educational and beneficial. And that sort of
mis-education is a very high price to pay for a bunch
of free TVs.